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Beit Hanina had a drummer, charged with the pre-dawn task of
awakening the village to sahoor, the light meal whose end marked
the beginning of each day's fast. |
The holy month of Ramadan and its
fasting are once again upon us. Muslims will fast from sun up 'til
sundown, abstaining from food, water and intimate relationships.
Each year around this time, my memories are rekindled of Ramadan
in our small village of Beit Hanina, a suburb of Jerusalem still
without electricity, where people carried lanterns to light their
way in the darkness as they went first to the mosque and then to
visit friends and family.
Beit Hanina had a drummer, charged with the pre-dawn task of
awakening the village to sahoor, the light meal whose end marked
the beginning of each day's fast. Closing my eyes and thinking
real hard, still brings back the sound of Beit Hanina's drummer
banging away, and the delightful memories of joining the other
children, carrying our decorated fanoosia lanterns with candles
burning brightly inside them, as we ran along behind the drummer,
singing, laughing and shouting to help awaken the sleeping adults
and start them on sahoor and their new day.
How I admired the drummer. How I wanted his job and to share in
his fun.
During Ramadan in 1979, when I made my first visit back to
Palestine since the 1967 expulsion, my cousin and I, both 18 and
living in the U.S., finally became the Ramadan drummers of Beit
Hanina. The Israeli invasion of 1967 and the subsequent occupation
made the drummers' job very high risk and today they are scarce.
Ramadan drummers were often stopped, even beaten, and some have
been killed by the Israeli occupying army.
By 1979, the village had not enjoyed a drummer in five years, so
my cousin and I delighted in our job of walking through the
village each morning banging away on large tin cans. It must have
been a very humorous sight. The elderly were happy to hear us,
while the younger people thought we were a great joke and made fun
of the "bored Americans."
But everyone agreed that we had renewed some "life" that had been
lost as we broke through the dark still nights of Ramadan. For me,
however briefly, I was transported back to a happy childhood whose
memories had never left me for a moment.
I still remember sitting by the family's transistor radio with my
siblings listening to the special programs as we awaited the
"cannon" to go off, signaling that it was time to break our fast.
The "cannon" was a World War I-era English relic and merely made a
loud bang, which was all that it was good for.
Ever since my own children were very small, I had regaled them
with the many stories of my childhood in Palestine, enjoying the
look of fascination on their faces as they implored me to tell
them yet "another story of when you were young in Palestine."
As we made our way through the cemetery gates and up the hill so
that we could read Al-Fatiha, which is the opening verse of the
Quran, at her graveside, I noticed an old rusty cannon sitting on
the top of the hill, virtually buried beneath the overgrown weeds.
I decided to head up the hill and take a closer look. Much to my
surprise, the cannon was an exact copy of the very same cannon
that I had remembered as a youth. I called my children up the hill
and showed them the cannon, surmising that the cannon was used to
alert the residents of Jerusalem when to break their fast before
the city fell under Zionist control.
During Ramadan, my mother would always invite friends and
relatives to our home to break the fast with us. As Muslims, we
are obligated to share breaking our fast with others, especially
those less fortunate than us. It is considered a blessing to do
so. It is something that we continue to do here in America as we
invite friends and loved ones to share in our blessing on this
holy month - the essence of which are a time of prayer, fasting
and charity.
Some of the best memories that I carry with me are connected to
the month of Ramadan in Palestine when I was a child. The
closeness and feeling of "community" that I felt during those
times is something that is almost beyond description. The sound of
the drummer, the Muezzin call to prayer, the static emanating from
the transistor radio, the "boom" of the cannon, the enticing aroma
of the special foods that we only ate during Ramadan, the sight of
families huddled together on a mat-covered floor around the
evening meals, illuminated by the flickering light of a kerosene
lantern, enjoying their meals, as humble as it may have been, in
the company of family and loved ones.
These are my memories of Ramadan before the Israeli invasion and
subsequent brutal and inhumane occupation, which has destroyed
many families and communities and is now in the process of causing
further havoc as Israel continues to erect its apartheid walls,
checkpoints and roadblocks that have reduced many Palestinian
villages and cities to nothing more than walled off ghettos and
open-air prisons.
Unfortunately, these will constitute the next generation of
Palestinian children's memories and experiences.
This past summer, I took my children to visit the grave of my
grandmother, which is located on a hillside cemetery off of Salah
Eddin Street in the Old City. The cemetery is actually located
inside the boundaries of the Palestinian village of Lifta, which
was ethnically cleansed of its Palestinian inhabitants, including
my wife's family, by the Zionists in 1948. Many people, including
my grandmother and her family members, are buried there, although
now it is considered part of Jerusalem.
The writer recounts
how Ramadan sparks memories of happy days in Palestine. It
appeared in www.helium.com in
September 2007.
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